


Part 4: Burned

by peldarjoi



Series: Terrorists Don't Get to Be Heroes [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Bajorans, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Original Character(s), Starfleet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 15:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 21,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12213450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peldarjoi/pseuds/peldarjoi
Summary: With her identity laid bare and just about every criminal in the quadrant on the lookout for her, can Kee get to her partner in time? And as for the captain, like all good captains, she'll throw protocol right out the window when a member of her crew is in danger.(I thought I was done writing, but the characters had other ideas.)Be sure you read parts 1, 2 and 3 of this series.





	1. Chapter 1

Kee adjusted Endeavor’s phaser resonance frequency for the third time this shift. It kept drifting by a few millihertz every hour. She began a maintenance request to submit to Engineering to check on that. It wouldn’t take them long to get around to it, they were as unoccupied as all of the departments other than Stellar Cartography, who were three days into gathering data on a b-class planet’s slow but accelerating descent into its k-class star on a decaying orbit. All non-essential resources had been allocated to the science division’s discretion and they were no doubt busy poring over the data as it came in.

The bridge, on the other hand, was absolutely silent, and virtually empty. Only ops, the conn, tactical, one of the side consoles and the captain’s chair were occupied. Captain Russel reclined sideways in her chair, reading something on a padd, probably wishing she could prop her feet up on her first officer’s chair. Ensign Erwin was at the conn while Loren worked on a lower deck to upgrade some navigation subsystem.

Kee idly tapped the send key to submit the request when her console lit up with an alert indicating an incoming transmission. She took a breath, eager to have something to actually do, but Lieutenant Campos at ops beat her to it.

“Captain, we’re picking up a general transmission on all subspace bands.”

“What sort of transmission?” She said, standing immediately.

“Uh, I’m not sure.” He said, studying his console. “It’s coming from everywhere, bogging down the entire comm grid. It looks like it’s a list of names.”

Kee pulled up the transmission on her screen and scanned through the first few names on the list. Urbano Ruiz, Ian Carballo, Rezgar, Gils Pallsson, T'pra, Tanandar Xue, Ter Th'vahloth, each with a photo and set of aliases attached… She knew those names. Immediately knew what this list was. “It’s Starfleet Intelligence.” She said with what felt like a baakonite weight hanging from her chest. “SI has been burned.”

“How many?” Russel asked.

She scrolled through the list to see every agent she knew of and a lot more. Her name was there, and so was Jeff’s. “All of it.”

Russel hesitated for only one shocked moment. “Is there any way to shut it down?”

Kee shook her head without tearing her eyes away from the list, “It’s already out there.”

After a moment, Russel said, “In accordance with Starfleet Intelligence directive 67-D, I concede command of Endeavor to the SI agent on board.”

As she spoke, Kee had already begun to set in motion her own emergency procedures, first sending a ping to Jeff on an emergency channel they’d agreed upon.

“SI agent? Who?” Campos said.

In the time it took him to ask the question, she sent Ensign Harpe to guard Loren and Ensign Penrose for Iliah.

“It’s me.” She said to a stunned bridge crew while composing a request for Bajoran Security to assign a team to her brother’s and uncle’s locations. “And I return command to Captain Russel.” Jeff had not responded. He was in trouble. She pinged him one more time. “I’m taking the Gyges. I want you to keep Endeavor out of this.”

“Wait.” Hawkins said, “SI? Since when?”

“Since…” Jeff still hadn’t responded. “Just before the end of the war.” She said hastily before stepping away from her console toward the turbolift. “Deck three.” She said as soon as she was inside.

Russel slipped in after her. “Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure yet. My partner’s not responding. I need to be sure he’s safe.”

“Wherever you need to go, it’s safer for us to take you there.”

“No. The people I need to contact will already be on edge once they see my picture on the list. If a Starfleet ship shows up, it’ll just scare them away that much faster.” The turbolift doors opened and she marched out into the corridor but turned back to Russel for a moment. “This is my fight, I don’t want it to be everybody else’s.” With that she continued on to her quarters.

When she arrived, she walked quickly to the bedroom to strip off her uniform and put on some civilian wear. She was just buttoning up her blouse when she heard the outer door open and close.

Knowing who she’d find there, she walked back into the main room to a specific wall panel and knelt down without looking at him. She pulled off the panel and reached for a black duffel bag stashed inside.

“How long has _that_ been there?” Loren asked.

“Uh, longer than you.” She said, trying to sound casual but knowing he knew her too well for it to fool him. She yanked the heavy bag out of its hiding place. “You heard what happened?”

“Slow news day, I guess.”

She stood and slung the bag over her shoulder.

“Where are you going to go?”

“I have to find my partner.” She walked with him out into the corridor past Harpe, who was waiting outside.

“I’m coming with you.” Loren said as they started down the corridor.

She stopped and turned to him. “No. I need you here where you’ll be safe.”

“Too bad.”

“What?” She demanded. “I outrank you. Besides that, this is an SI matter.”

He stood before her unphased, “And you’re going to have every bad guy that you’ve ever wronged out there looking for you. You need someone. It might as well be the best pilot around.”

She shifted the strap on her shoulder, she hated the idea of taking him into this situation. If it went sideways and they _both_ died, Iliah would be left alone. Or if he died and she survived… she was sure she couldn’t go through that again. But she did need someone. Someone she could rely on, someone she was in tune with the way she was with Jeff.

Finally, logic and reason won over and she glanced at Harpe, “Dismissed.” Then to Loren, “I can’t lose you.”

“You won’t.”

“Lose the uniform and get Gyges ready to launch. I’ll meet you there.” She turned and headed quickly down the corridor to make one more quick stop. She didn’t usually do this before leaving on a mission. Iliah was used to her having to leave at a moment’s notice and without saying goodbye. But this time was different, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this might be the mission she didn’t come home from. Loren was right, there would be a lot of people out looking for revenge on her.

She arrived at Brisk’s quarters just as Andrew was slowly walking Iliah and his son, Richard, back to their quarters with ensign Penrose only a few steps behind.

“What’s going on here?” Andrew asked with concern.

“Just a precaution. I’m sure you’ll hear about it soon enough. Give me a moment with Iliah?” She asked.

“Sure.” He led Richard into their quarters and Penrose kept a discrete distance.

Kee bent down to her daughter’s level and the strap of the bag slipped off her shoulder. “I just wanted to see you before I left.”

“You’re going on a mission again, aren’t you?” Iliah said with a hint of sadness.

“I have to, we talked about this. This is my job. And your dad’s.”

“Can’t it be someone else’s job?”

The pleading in her voice cut right through her heart. “There’s someone out there who’s in danger and I need to help him.”

“But why you?”

“I have everyone on this ship to come after me if I got into trouble, but he doesn’t have anybody but me.”

Iliah nodded her still-baby-soft face. “You should help him, then.”

Kee pulled her daughter in for a hug. When she pulled away it felt like her heart was ripped out to be left behind with her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She said and started down the corridor. Penrose moved in to usher the girl into Brisk’s quarters as Kee passed by and hurried toward the nearest turbolift.

When she entered the shuttle bay, she couldn’t see Loren through the polarized mirror-like viewport, but she knew he’d be waiting for her inside. She stepped in through the hatch on the starboard side and slipped into the seat next to him. Before she even had a chance to check how long until departure, the comm channel blinked at her.

She tapped the control and Campos’ voice came through. _“Commander, you have someone from Bajor asking to talk to you.”_

She glanced sideways at Loren, who was still in the middle of flight checks and sighed, “I’ll take it here.”

The screen on the side panel blinked on and Edda’s face appeared. _“Kee, what is going on? Why are there security officers all over our property?”_

She highly doubted they were “all over” the property and tried to brush off his concern. “Hey, bro, nice to see you.” She said overly enthusiastically.

 _“Kee.”_ He was not amused.

“Okay, did you hear about the transmission that went out a little while ago?”

_“Uh, comm traffic’s crazy because of some kind of broadcast, but what does that have to do with these security officers?”_

“Everything, unfortunately. You haven’t heard what the message is?”

_“No.”_

She hesitated, but there was no point trying to hide it now. “It’s a list of Starfleet Intelligence Agents.”

_“And?”_

“My name is on that list.”

 _“Why would your name-”_ His eyes widened when he put it together. _“So you’re some kind of_ spy _now?”_

“Well…” She could feel Loren’s sidelong glance at her. “‘Spy’ isn’t exactly a good description of what we do… we prefer the term agent.”

He looked at her, unconvinced. _“Do you go places undercover?”_

“Well, yes.”

_“With aliases.”_

“Yes.”

_“Disguises?”_

“Sometimes.”

_“And you gather secret information?”_

“… yes…”

_“Sounds like a spy to me.”_

She sighed, he had a point. “Sometimes we do other stuff- look, you can call me later and we’ll argue all about it, but right now I have to go. Just _please_ cooperate with the security officers. I don’t want anything to happen to you because of me.” _Again_ , she thought.

_“Fine.”_

She cut the channel and saw that there were three more messages from Bajor, but she dismissed them.

With a nod from her, Loren opened a channel to the bridge. “Bridge, this is Gyges, ready to depart.”

_“Confirmed. Good luck.”_

As the bay door slid up, she stood and leaned over to him, bent down and kissed him. She breathed deeply the scent of his cologne and ran her fingers through the hair on the back of his head. With the taste of his kiss on her lips, she pulled away and sat back down to allow him to take the controls.

* * *

“Test, test.” Kee said into the hidden comm unit.

 _“Loud and clear.”_ Loren said from both the ear piece and the other end of the cockpit.

She finished preparations to beam down to a bar on Lyshan Prime that she and Jeff had chosen for their emergency meeting place. “Okay, I-” She’d become so focused on what she was doing that she’d expected to see Jeff sitting in the pilot’s seat when she turned around. “I’m ready to beam down any time.”

“Entering orbit now.” He didn’t seem to notice her hesitation. “What is this place, anyway?”

“We have a contact here that we’ve used several times. She already knows me. We can trust her.” She leaned over his shoulder and tapped out coordinates for transport. While there, she took in one last breath of his cologne before she walked back to the transporter. "Don't pull me out unless I say so."

“Energizing.” He said.

In the seconds between coherence, dematerialization and coherence again, she pondered how accustomed to the transporter she’d become. The first time she’d done it when her cell beamed away after liberating that labor camp had been such a strange and eerie feeling of momentary nothingness. But now, she hardly ever gave it any thought. Just a swirling weightlessness, then she was there.

The coordinates she’d indicated deposited her just outside the bar’s entrance. Feeling as vulnerable with her identity out there for all to see as though she’d materialized without her clothes, she walked up the stairs and inside with as much confidence as she could conjure up.

The walk up to the bar felt like all eyes were on her. A quick sideways glance told her many were.

When she reached the bar, their Benzite contact, Goret, was already moving toward her. “Are you crazy? Your face is _everywhere_!” She said in a hushed voice.

“I’m looking for my partner. Has he been here?”

“No. And you shouldn’t either.” She whispered then backed away at the sight of whoever had just sidled up behind Kee.

Two bodies massive enough to have their own gravitational pull descended on either side. Her heart rate jumped and she straightened up only to bump into a third body behind her.

“You will come with us.” A deep voice said.

 _“I’ve just lost transporter lock on you.”_ Loren warned in her ear.

She hesitated, calculating her chances. The one on her left was a burly Chalnoth, the one on the right was a bald Orion and, by the sound of his voice, the one behind was a Lethean. She slowly turned within the small space they had allotted her.

“Try it.” The Lethean challenged.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the other bar patrons watching the scene closely, none of whom looked like they were likely to be on her side. She opted to go with them.

Seeing her compliance, the Lethean turned just enough to allow her to pass. She took measured steps as she walked to the door with them flanking her. “Where are we going?” She asked, fully expecting them to withhold the information.

“To see an old friend.” He rumbled as they filed out of the establishment.

Her escorts were so wide that they had to exit one at a time. If she was to have any chance, this was it. While the Chalnoth and Orion were still inside, she swung her elbow back to jab into the Lethean’s ribcage then spun around to slam the heel of her hand up into his nose. She turned to face the Chalnoth next, but the Orion was too fast. He swept her legs out from under her and she fell flat on her face.

Before she could will the air back into her lungs, he picked her up by the back of her shirt and threw her against the railing. Her head hit the metal with a strange ringing sound. The last thing she felt was tumbling helplessly down the stairs.


	2. Chapter 2

Russel walked the corridor of deck five instead of having taken the turbolift directly to sickbay. She could have contacted the people she needed to talk to from the bridge or her ready room, but she needed to get out and move.

Kee didn’t want Endeavor involved in an SI matter, but Starfleet Intelligence was still Starfleet and that meant it involved everybody. And technically, she hadn’t given any specific orders to that effect. When it came to matters of SI, it had been made clear from the beginning that Kee had absolute authority, though the few times she’d had to exercise it, she always did so respectfully.

Russel thought, not for the first time, that she’d been extremely fortunate to have her on her ship. Russel was the one to have made the request and there were signs early on that indicated she’d be a good officer, but there was no way she could have known how good. Beyond that initial hunch, it had been pure luck.

She entered sickbay to find Lieutenant Capshaw hard at work calibrating a piece of medical equipment. If anybody would have any clues to Kee’s whereabouts, it would be her best friend.

“Captain.” She greeted her in her usual friendly manner. “What can I do for you?”

“You know about Kee and SI by now.”

“Yes.” Her tone made it clear she hadn’t known before the list came out.

“Do you know of any way to tell where she might have gone or what systems she might frequent?”

She sighed with a far-off look in her eyes. “Let me think. There are pathogens that can be traced to specific regions, but she’s never-”

“What?”

She held up one finger and moved quickly to the main console. “There was one thing that was odd.” She tapped at the interface. “In her file, there’s a request for a specific vaccination at her yearly checkup. It’s one I’d never seen before, so I had to look it up.”

“How long has she been taking it?”

“Oh, two or three years now. There are several locations it would indicate.”

“Send me a list and anything else you can come up with.” She said, already starting to feel better.

“Yes, sir.” She said, already at work.

Russel left her medical officer to her work and turned to leave. She walked the short distance to the turbolift and ordered it, “Communications.”

While it whisked her to deck seven, she paced the small space thoughtfully. Finding Kee was merely a backup plan, what was really needed was to somehow mitigate this loss of SI’s anonymity.

“Lieutenant Yanovich.” She said as soon as the doors to the Comm center parted for her. “I need you to track that transmission we received this morning.”

He straightened up at his console in the small room. “If we can isolate the subspace refraction rate, we might be able to track traces of the sympathetic oscillation wave back to the source.”

She felt the corner of her lip creep up, “You just came up with that on the spot?”

He chuckled modestly, “We might have been discussing it earlier.” He said, indicating the other comm officers on his team.

“Do it.” She said and turned on her heel and headed straight back to the turbolift. “Engineering.” She ordered it.

When she strode into Engineering, Lieutenant Brisk was right where she expected, at one of the workstations that surrounded the warp core.

“Lieutenant, if we locate the source of the transmission, is there any way to corrupt the data? Maybe with a sub-evasive algorithm?”

“Since the data has already been broadcast, corrupting the data at the source wouldn’t do any good. We’d have to send out another transmission disguised so it looks like it’s an addendum to the original.”

Russel nodded, “Piggyback it on the original subcarrier wave.”

“Exactly!” He said excitedly. “It’ll take some time to link in and transmit. Ideally, we should be physically at the source, otherwise we run the risk of our signal being cut off and we wouldn’t have another chance.”

“Agreed. I’ll speak to Streck about a landing party, then I’ll be back to work with you on the algorithm.” She stalked out of Engineering with a lightness to her step she hadn’t had when she walked in.


	3. Chapter 3

The first thing Kee noticed when she slowly awoke was the pounding behind her eyes. Before opening them, she listened for sounds around her, but there was nothing. No people and no sound of a warp core to suggest she was on a ship. That was a good sign, at least.

What was definitely _not_ a good sign was the feeling that her shoulders were strained backward. She tested and found her wrists secured behind her with a pair of restraints that were attached somehow to the chair she was propped up in.

Finally, she cautiously opened her eyes and even the dim light of the windowless room pierced through to her already aching head. A small groan found its way out of her throat.

_“Kee! You’re awake!”_ Loren’s voice came directly into her ear.

That, at least, meant she hadn’t been taken of out the range of Gyges and transmissions weren’t being blocked. It also meant that whoever had taken her didn’t realize she wasn’t alone.

_“Do you have any idea where you are?”_

She managed a small negative sound.

_“I can’t make out your bio signs, but your comm signal is coming from within the city.”_ He said with a hurriedness that suggested he was multitasking.

The door opened with a mechanical sound and the Lethean from the bar walked in, straight for her. He grabbed her chin and positioned her head at an awkward angle, then held a device up to her forehead where she’d hit it on the railing earlier. Kee felt the tingle of a dermal regenerator and her headache diminished from a supernova to a solar flare.

When he was finished, he walked back to the door and took up a position just inside. A pair of footsteps approached and the man who rounded the corner into the room was Kodun, the first criminal she’d helped put away over ten years ago. On his arm was his female body guard… what was her name? Nialle.

Kee spoke first, “So, they let you out?” Since Mal’s mission had been cut short, not all of the evidence she’d gathered had been conclusive and he’d only served three years.

“Of course they did. There was no evidence against me.” He said in that deceptively calm manner of his. “But your little escapade cost me nearly my entire empire, save a few loyal devotees.” His voice began to take on a dangerous edge. “Not to mention the loss of my credibility with the Orion Syndicate!”

He made a show of calming himself, “And what drops into my lap, but the identities of the two spies that were responsible for it all.”

She didn’t need a history lesson, she needed to find Jeff. “I’m looking for my partner. Have you seen him?” She said casually.

“If I had, he would be dead!” He shouted suddenly. “But I’ll have to settle for you and leave _Jeff Riggs_ to be picked to pieces by whoever else is out there looking for the two of you.”

As if on cue, Nialle walked around behind her and yanked her head back by her hair. Cold metal pressed against the skin on her neck.

“So, what? You’re going to kill me? That’s your big revenge?”

“I admit, it lacks a certain elegance, but in the end, you will have paid for what you did to me with your life and it will have been done by _my_ order, no one else’s.”

She looked up at Nialle, but said to Kodun, “Go ahead, do it.” She steeled herself as the blade pressed harder against her skin. “Do it and you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison.”

With a nonverbal command she couldn’t see, he had Nialle ease the knife’s pressure. “Is that supposed to scare me?”

“It should. Take a moment to scan me for subspace signals. Everything you’ve said is being recorded by my partner back on my ship. Your involvement with the Syndicate, threatening a Starfleet officer.”

Nialle released her grip on her hair and she was finally able to straighten up her head. Kodun stepped closed with a scanner, which confirmed what she’d said.

He reared back, infuriated and threw the scanner at the Lethean guard at the door. “Fool! How could you allow this?” He roared.

The guard sneered at her behind absolute terror. Kodun may very well kill him for it.

“You kill me, he transmits immediately to the authorities. If you do _anything_ other than release me and allow me to walk away, he immediately transmits.”

For once, he was caught off guard and she pressed her advantage. “Your only option is to slink away back into whatever hole you came out of with your tail between your legs.”

With barely contained fury roiling beneath the surface, he motioned to Nialle to release her. She jerked the cuffs painfully, then they released, allowing Kee’s shoulders to finally drop back into their normal position.

Nialle grabbed Kee’s upper arm, yanked her to her feet and shoved her forward through the door. Her fingertips dug into her arm as she propelled her through the corridor to the exit with Kodun on their tail.

Kee stumbled a few steps as she was pushed out onto the dark street and turned to face the fuming Kodun.

“If I ever see you again-” He started.

“If you ever see me again, it’ll be from a holding cell.”

He lunged out the door but Nialle and his Lethean guard grabbed him and pulled him inside.

As soon as she was alone, she looked around to find that she was on an ordinary street and began to walk toward the nearest cross street.

“You’re still with me, right?”

_“Yes. Just a little speechless.”_

As she neared the intersection, she checked the street signs. “I’m at Gelum and Hodreed.”

_“Got it.”_ He said after a moment. _“I see you. Locking on. Energizing.”_

She waited for the transporter to sweep her away, but nothing happened.

_“Woah! Stand by.”_

She waited, hoping by the Prophets that someone wasn’t coming after him.

Finally, his voice came through again, _“You’ve got a remat.”_

“What? Where?” She began wildly patting herself down to locate the device that would scramble her signal during rematerialization.

_“If you hold still, I can tell you.”_

She forced herself to stand still.

_“It’s on the inside of your left forearm. Probably under the skin.”_

She pulled up her sleeve, but didn’t see anything right away, so she ran her thumb along the tissues of her arm and came across what felt like a tiny kezko bean. “Found it. When did that happen?” It had to have happened during the few minutes she was in the bar or on the way to Kodun's hideout. She reached back to find a switchblade that Kodun’s guard had also failed to remove and made a tiny cut right over the remat. She squeezed and pinched until it slipped out of her skin onto the ground along with a few drops of blood. “Try it now.”

_“Energizing.”_

That time, she immediately felt the dizzying weightlessness of the transporter.

“Who would have planted a remat on you?” Loren said as soon as she joined him.

“I don’t know. Could be a lot of people.” She leaned over the console to see the readings on the remat. It had an unmistakably Ferengi energy reading. “Lac.” She said.

“Who?”

“Daemon Lac. The Jem’hadar came after him looking for us. Tore his ship apart, probably cost him a lot of money to repair.” She thought for a moment. “Or it could be Trok. I helped Lac collect a questionable debt from him.”

“Do you think they’ll try again?”

“Nah. They’re mostly harmless. Besides, a remat like that is expensive. Not something they’re likely to try again.”

Loren only shook his head, “Where to next?”


	4. Chapter 4

“Deck one, aft.” Maggie told the turbolift. She’d been called to a briefing with the senior staff, minus the two missing. She shook her head to herself, still not quite able to accept that Kee was an SI agent. And for how long? She thought back over the years to all of the absences with only vague explanations of where she’d gone. All of her sudden disappearances and sidestepping. When did it start?

The time came to mind when Kee had left suddenly without explanation or even a goodbye only days before the Breen attacked Earth. That was less than a year after they’d started serving aboard the Antares. Could she really have been keeping this from her for that long? Could she carry on a lie for so many years?

Kee was not a deceitful person, she had to have been under orders to keep it secret. And if nothing else, she was a stickler for orders.

Out of curiosity, Maggie had compared all of those times Kee had left the ship against reports of major arrests or other known upsets in the criminal world. Not all of them matched up, but there were enough that did that it couldn’t be just a series of coincidences. All this time, Kee had been out there doing the one thing she had always sworn to do: protect the innocent, take down the not-innocent.

Still, she couldn’t deny that it stung, a lot, that she could have lied to her face for so long.

The turbolift opened up to the short hallway that led past Hawkins’ office to the conference room. When she arrived at her destination, Streck and Ensign Erwin were already seated and Hawkins and Brisk were just entering from the bridge via the door opposite her.

Seeing Brisk reminded her that she should stop by his quarters later to check on Iliah. It wasn’t uncommon for the girl’s parents to both be away on missions, but she was getting old enough to understand that at any time, one or both of them might never return. Maggie vividly remembered that revelation when she was a girl aboard a starship.

Russel arrived immediately after everyone was seated and Maggie wondered how she always timed that so perfectly. “Report.” She said simply, standing at her place rather than sitting.

Streck spoke up first, “Communications gave us the location of the transmission source.” He tapped a key on his padd and an empty area of space appeared on the main display with a set or coordinates in the center.

“there’s nothing there.” Hawkins said.

“No system or space station, but it could have come from something mobile like a ship or a relay. If we’re lucky, they’re still nearby.”

Something about the coordinates jogged her memory. “Streck, zoom out the visual.” When he did, a star system came into view. “Lamda Cornae. That’s one of the three possible locations Kee may have been working in based on the criteria we discussed earlier, Captain.”

Russel sat finally, and studied the display for a moment as though it would somehow tell her more. “What do we know about Lamda Cornae?”

“It’s just outside Federation space, about a sector out from Ferengi territory. Over the last few years, it’s been a magnet for criminal factions.” Hawkins said.

“More recently,” Streck added, “it’s suspected to be the operating base for an anti-Federation organization called the Cooperative.”

Maggie flipped quickly through her notes she’d taken earlier. “I saw something that mentioned a group by that name… here it is. They had been organizing as a legitimate coalition, but suddenly went underground around stardate 61734.8. Since then, they’ve been called renegades by the governments that had originally started the group and have been responsible for a number of terrorist attacks against the Federation and our allies.”

“Okay, does that help us?”

“It coincides perfectly to one of the times Kee was off the ship for an extended period.” It seemed pretty reasonable that she’d been working against that group for years and, if that was also where the transmission came from, it could very well be where they’d find her now.

“Erwin, come up with a plan to get us in and out of that region.” Russel said.

“Dales, Brisk and I have been loosely discussing a proposal to add dispersive hull plating to the Coho. It wouldn’t be anywhere near as invisible as Gyges, but we’re confident it wouldn’t be picked up by a passive sensor sweep.”

“Not the Sochi?” It was a newer shuttle, it seemed like a better candidate for this type of modification.

“The Coho’s hull design lends itself better to the plating process. Besides, it’s smaller, so the work would go faster.”

“How long would it take?” Russel asked Brisk.

“I can put a team on it right away, but it’ll be a couple of days.” Brisk said.

“Make it so.” She said, then to the rest of them. “Most of you know, Brisk and I have been working on a virus to broadcast from the source of the original transmission. Streck, prepare your team for whatever situation we find there. We’ll need to send a couple of engineers with you to do the work.”

“Who do you have in mind?” He asked.

Russel cleared her throat and avoided looking at her first officer. “Myself and Brisk.” She continued quickly without allowing Hawkins a chance to object. “That’ll be all. Dismissed.”

As the group began filing out of the conference room, Maggie heard Hawkins quietly say to Russel, “A moment?” There was no question what he wanted to talk to her about, but trying to talk the captain out of an away mission was never an easy task.

Maggie continued out of the room as though she hadn’t heard a thing. She had some inoculations to prepare for the away team.


	5. Chapter 5

Loren watched Kee move swiftly from place to place around the shuttle. Not in a hurried manor, just quickly and efficiently. It occurred to him that on her two-person missions, much had to be done by each of them to prepare.

“We’re entering the Theta Cygni system.” He told her, glancing back just in time to see her slip a thin-handled blade into a concealed pocket on the inside of her thigh. Damn, she was sexy.

“Start scanning for an altonian-luvetric alloy signature.” She said as she took her seat. They’d followed the same procedure at all three locations they’d tried so far. Altonian-luvetric alloy was one of the few ways to detect a gyges-class shuttle and it shouldn’t have surprised him that was what this partner of hers flew.

He tried being the perfect, supportive mate. But he could never quite forget that this man that she worked so closely with and had such a clear and intense bond with knew the taste of her lips. He knew how her skin felt and what she sounded like when she was trying not to make noise. Even worse, he knew those indecipherable murmurs she made when she was having one of those nightmares of hers.

Intellectually he knew he had no right to feel this way. Riggs hadn’t stolen her from him back then, she’d made a choice. And he certainly had nothing to worry about now, Kee had said it was long over between them and her word was absolutely solid. But still, jealousy burned inside him at times. If she ever knew, she’d be furious.

The computer chimed at him urgently. “Hold on, we’re picking up something.”

“Is it the ship?”

“We’re too far away to tell. I’m taking us closer.” There was little doubt, though. No other ship used that particular alloy.

“Looks like it’s coming from the fifth planet. It’s uninhabited.” 

As he moved Gyges closer, she put a visual of the planet up on the viewer. The computer automatically zoomed in on the source. Soon, a clear crash site was visible, complete with an impact rut and hull debris leading to a mangled gyges-class shuttle.

“Checking for biological remains.” She said in a tone that betrayed none of what she must have been feeling.

He waited, hoping for her sake that his remains were not there to be found.

She shook her head. “Nothing. I’m broadening the search to detect bio-signs and scanning the whole area.” After another moment, she shook her head again. “He’s not here.”

“Somebody could have picked him up after the crash. Either that, or he beamed off right before.”

She nodded her agreement, “We’ll continue on to the fourth planet like we planned and check with our contact there.”

He couldn’t help but stair, she was so beautiful when she was cogitating.

* * *

Avel City reminded Loren of some of the non-Federation marketplaces he’d seen. Busy, crowded and noisy, but not rundown or dirty. In fact, it seemed to be home to a thriving economy.

He stuck close on Kee’s tail as she wound her way through the crowd. She slowed when she reached a table with sparkling jewelry of all sorts on it. Her hand hovered over a hideously ugly bracelet and she pointed at it.

The merchant picked up the item and Kee handed her a coin that he hadn’t noticed she had. The merchant looked closely at the coin and back up at Kee, nodding once.

Without being given the bracelet, Kee threaded her arm in Loren’s elbow and guided him towards a seating area.

“What was that about?” he asked when they sat down.

“It’s a bogus coin. Now we wait for someone to leave the rear of the shop and head down that alley.”

He watched her as she watched the crowd around them. To anyone else, she’d appear completely relaxed, but he knew her well enough to know she was on high alert. Any one of them could recognize her at any moment.

Some kind of flame reflected in her eyes and he turned to see a restaurant behind him cooking something over a fire. Correction, they were cooking something in the fire.

Kee crinkled her nose at the odor of burned flesh she detested.

“You care about this guy a lot.” He started.

“We’ve been together for a long time.” She said idly.

“Yeah, but it’s more than just ‘the guy you work with.’ And don’t tell me you’re just doing your job.”

She’d been about to say something, but closed her mouth. That was exactly what she was about to say. Instead, she sighed and thought for a moment. “He’s my _partner_ , that’s all I can say.”

He knew from the way she said ‘partner’ that what she meant was far deeper than just a working relationship. He trusted her, and believed her when she’d said there was nothing improper between them anymore. But it was clear that the bond between them was beyond anything she had with anyone aboard Endeavor or even with him. Maybe even rivaling the relationship she had with the former members of her resistance cell.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Kee was not his alone, never had been. A piece of her belonged to SI, a piece of her belonged to the Resistance, a piece of her still belonged to the love she’d lost. But hadn’t that been something he promised her way back when they were first together? That he’d take any part of her that she would give him.

“There.” She said, pulling him out of his reverie.

He stood with her and they walked casually toward the alley she’d indicated. They slipped out of the oppressive crowd and into the narrow space between buildings to find a Tanugan man waiting for them.

“You shouldn’t have come here. I can’t be seen meeting with you.” He said.

“Have any other agents contacted you since the list went public?”

“No, they’ve all had the good sense to stay away.”

She sighed. “Okay. Thank you.”

The man hurried away back to his shop.

She leaned her back against the wall and rested her head on it with her eyes closed. “He could be _anywhere_.”

“We’ll find him.” He said more confidently than he felt.

They didn’t have long to ponder their next move. A shadow moved across the end of the alley where they had entered, then an Enolian turned the corner to face them with a phaser already trained on them.

Kee straightened and moved to confront him, but he made a show of tapping a key on the phaser to increase the power. “I wouldn’t do that. You’re a lot more valuable to me alive, but I can still make a profit if you’re dead.”

Loren glanced down the alley the other way, but a wide Finnean blocked the way. The Enolian gestured up with the tip of his phaser.

Loren and Kee both tipped their heads back to see a pair of sniper-shaped silhouettes on balconies above them.

“Now, I think we’re all in agreement.” He said smugly. He gave an almost imperceptible nod to one of the snipers.

A low-powered stun blast lashed down and struck Kee in the back. Loren rushed forward to her but the Finnean grabbed him firmly from behind. Instead, the Enolian calmly caught her as her knees buckled and she slipped into unconsciousness.

Loren continued to struggle, but the Enolian tisked at him, “We were warned about her. Don’t make us stun you too.”

With that, the Finnean began to haul him away down the alley.

* * *

The group of four bounty hunters, for lack of a better thing to call them, had dragged and carried Loren and Kee through the city to an old warehouse. Not taking any chances with Kee even though she remained stunned, they’d tied them both up and brought several potential buyers to see them. All of them seemed to know her. He was sure she’d have a few choice things to say to them had she woken up.

Last, a Reegrunion and some associates came for a look. They must have been willing to meet the price, because they were quickly beamed up to a ship where they were secured to a couple of metal chairs in a messy cargo bay cluttered with shipping containers. As soon as they were alone, Loren tested his bonds. Each wrist was clasped firmly in one side of a restraint with the other side that would usually be used for the opposite wrist secured around each arm of the chair.

A short time later a pair of thugs came in, dragging an unconscious man who’s hands were bound behind his back and dumped him on the floor between himself and Kee. Even though he’d only seen him briefly over the comm years ago, he recognized him immediately as Kee’s partner despite the swollen bruises obscuring his features.

He watched the slow rise and fall of Rigg’s chest, then turned to Kee to watch the same. He just stared at her, wondering how he could have landed such a strong, intelligent and beautiful woman. Not to mention frustratingly aloof. And stubborn. And single-minded. And did he mention stubborn? He smiled to himself.

The doors opened noisily, pulling him from his thoughts and the Reegrunion from before came in with what looked like a hypospray in his hand. He walked straight to Kee, Loren felt his whole body tense. What was he going to do?

He cupped her chin and lifted her face to his. “Not so dangerous when she’s unconscious, is she?”

Loren didn’t respond.

He let out a short laugh, “You have no idea who I am or what she did to me.”

“Apparently you’re not as important to her as you’d like to think.”

“She cheated me,” He said as though Loren hadn’t spoken. “She conned me, planted a tracking device on me and stole my money to cover it up.”

“I’m so sorry you’re that gullible.” He mocked, but in reality, he couldn’t imagine any man being able to resist her advances, whatever she was up to.

“She also promised me something.” He said as he leaned down to grotesquely place his lips on hers. It turned Loren’s stomach to see him kiss her deeply. Without breaking contact, he raised the hypospray to her neck and activated it.

It must have been a stimulant, because Kee immediately woke up. When her eyes focused on the Reegrunion, she pulled away in disgust. “Ugh! What the hell, Vargaan?”

“I see you haven’t forgotten.”

She made a show of wiping his saliva off on her shoulder. While she was doing so, she stole a glance at Loren and Riggs, then faced Vargaan again.

“And you’d better not have forgotten our deal.” His hand dropped to her thigh and slid up.

“What deal? You were conned. Let it go.”

He slammed his hands down on her forearms and shoved his face in hers. “You owe me! And I will have what’s mine!”

“See, I’m not sure how that would work since you have more dick in your personality than you do in your pants.”

At that, he reared up and backhanded her across her cheek. Loren felt his body press forward against the restraints even though he’d have no chance of overpowering them. Reminding himself that she dealt with this kind of thing all the time did nothing to ease the feeling.

Her head was turned to the side with her face covered by her hair that had come loose at some point. Astonishingly, she began laughing a low, mocking chuckle. When she turned back, he saw her smiling through a split and bleeding lip. “Careful, Vargaan, you don’t want to ruin what your employers paid good money for.”

Vargaan stood in mute fury.

“Speaking of your _employers_ , and your pants, I take it you’ve never mentioned that the only reason we found their little salvage operation was because you can’t keep it in your _pants_.”

Vargaan whipped out a blade and pointed at her furiously, but she just calmly stared up at him. “What? Afraid of what your employers would do to you if you kill me?”

He swung the knife down at her and sunk it deep into the chair between her legs and glared into her steady eyes. Finally, he yanked it free and stomped out of the room.

“Friend of yours?”

“Oh yeah, we go way back.” She said sarcastically while studying Riggs. “He’s breathing, at least.”

“Any brilliant SI tricks for getting us out of here?”

“I’ll let you know as soon as I come up with one.” She flashed him a smile before leaning over to get a look at the locking mechanism on her restraints.

“Do you still have that knife in the pocket on your leg?’

She wiggled her leg around to feel for it. “Yeah.” She said with surprise. She stretched her leg out towards Riggs, sliding her lower half out of the seat.

“What are you doing?”

She nudged his shoulder with the tip of her boot. “Waking him up.” He didn’t stir, so she bumped harder. “Hey, targ herder.” Finally, she shoved at the back of his head hard enough to roll him onto his face.

At that point, he began to stir. His arms tightened against the restraints as he regained consciousness and grasped the situation. He blinked up at Loren first, recognition passing across his face.

“Jeff.” Kee called to him.

He turned and craned his neck to see her. “Great. I take it you won’t be coming to my rescue now.”

“What do you mean? I totally planned this.”

“Okay, _Lieutenant-commander_.” He said, playing along. “What’s your master plan.”

“I have a blade in a pocket on the inside of my right thigh. If you can get to it, I may be able to pick the lock on your cuffs.”

Without accepting or rejecting her plan, he rolled onto his back, sat part way up and began inch-worming over to her.

“So, what happened?” She asked.

“I was here in Theta Cygni when that transmission came through.” He said, his voice strained from the effort. “They were on top of me so fast, they must have known ahead of time.”

“Think these guys had the list before it was broadcast?”

“Then released it to everybody else either to cover up who got it first or to cause chaos to make it difficult for SI to respond.” He reached her location and began the process of getting his feet under him. “They came at me hard and fast. Beamed me off when my shields were down.”

“That must be when the shuttle crashed.” She concluded. “You’re going to have to beg for another one again.”

“Think they’ll give me one if I ask really nice?”

“Depends on whether the requisitioner is a Tellerite.” She said. Of course, a Tellerite would prefer a nice, challenging argument instead.

Finally, he was upright and began leaning back to reach her lap. Loren tamped down a rush of jelousy. This was not the time for that.

Riggs reached and bent impossibly far back for having his legs immobilized until he went a bit too far and he collapsed onto her lap. Both let out a surprised yelp at the same moment.

Kee then snorted a suppressed laugh, which prompted a chuckle from Riggs and he worked to lift himself back up.

After searching for a few moments, he straightened up, “I have it.” Then he bent to the side to place it in her hand, lowered farther down to drop to his knees and awkwardly lift his wrists up to her.

Kee worked at it for a minute or so then suddenly called out some combination of a Klingon and Bolian curse, followed immediately by a sharp, metallic clang that reverberated through the nearly empty room when the knife hit the floor.

“Did I getcha?” She asked Riggs.

He let out a relieved sound, “No.”

“Let’s just hope nobody heard that.” She added. He couldn’t see what she was doing, but guessed that she must have had the lock casing open by now and was working on the circuits of the locking mechanism.

“Someone’s coming!” Loren whispered before he had consciously registered the sound.

Without hesitation, Riggs dropped to a seated position on the floor, taking a split second to swipe the knife up into his hand.

The doors opened mechanically and one of Vargaan’s associates leaned in and looked around.

With a harrumph, he backed out of the room and let the doors close them in again.

No sooner had the doors met in the middle than Riggs was back up in that awkward position to let Kee work on the cuffs. Loren watched her brow furrow in concentration while she worked. In fact, she was so focused on the task that she actually flinched when they clicked open.

Riggs spun around onto his knees and began working to free Kee.

“So, I take it you know who Vargaan’s bosses are?” Loren asked.

“We disrupted some plans of theirs a few years ago.” Riggs said.

“Involving quite a spectacular fireball.” She added.

“After that, the leaders of the movement and what remained of their followers disappeared. We’ve been trying to track them down ever since. Now, it seems, _they’ve_ found _us_.” To punctuate the point, the cuffs on one of Kee’s wrists popped open and he moved to the other.

“I assume you brought the Gyges?” Riggs said after a moment.

“Yes.” Loren said. “It’s unlikely anybody will find it where we left it.” They’d gotten very good at concealing the already virtually invisible ship. “As long as we haven’t been taken out of the system, we can recall it if we can get to a comm console.”

The other side clicked open and Kee shot out of the chair toward the door. While she took up a position next to the door, Riggs came to work on Loren’s restraints, still using Kee’s knife as a tool.

Kee placed her palm flat against the wall, feeling for vibrations, he guessed. Even as Riggs worked, he found that he had to remind himself that they were on the same side. He hadn’t realized his jealousy ran so deep. And even beyond that, the fear that someday she might choose this life over the one she shared with him.

The first cuff clicked open.

“Someone’s coming.” She said, pulling him out of his thoughts. Only a few seconds later, they could hear footsteps again. Sounded like two this time.

Kee tensed when the doors parted. She reached out to grab the Reegrunion that had checked on them before, pulled him into the room and threw him down onto the deck.

While her back was still turned, Vargaan rushed through and wrapped his arms around hers.

Kee pushed hard against him, forcing him to stumble backward into a stack of crates. He clenched his teeth when the corner of one of the jabbed into his back and he lost his grip.

With one arm free, she swung her elbow up into his nose. He doubled over with his hands covering his face and blood already dripping down.

She turned back by the time the other one was back on his feet and she struck out with a punch to his jaw. While he was reeling, she spun him around and kicked the back of his knees to force them to bend. Then she grabbed some kind of cargo tool nearby and bashed it across his face.

Vargaan, still unable to straighten up fully and covered in his own blood, pulled a knife and swung it at her.

Kee dodged, jumping back.

He slashed again and she caught his arm. Immediately, she pulled him toward her, shifted her feet slightly and slammed her knee into his ribcage, forcing him to drop the knife.

With his free arm, he swung and hit her square in the chest. The force caused her to stumbled back onto her knees.

“Kee!” Riggs said and slid the knife across the floor.

It went straight to her and she reached down to place her hand precisely onto the handle to stop it. She scooped it up and, with the same motion, swung it up then down into his boot through his foot and into the decking.

Vargaan howled in pain and tried to pull away, but his foot was pinned. Kee took the opportunity to wrap her hands around his neck and slam his face down into her knee. He crumpled awkwardly to the floor with his foot still stuck.

The final restraint popped open just as Kee reached down to retrieve her knife with a small grunt when she yanked on it. Riggs was immediately over, bending down to grab the knife Vargaan had dropped.

When Loren joined them, Kee grabbed his hand and gave it a quick squeeze before she tapped the pad to open the door without a word. The unspoken plan was clear, get to a comm terminal and signal Gyges’ computer to beam them out.

Kee leaned part way out to peer down the corridor in both directions then moved out cautiously. Loren stuck close with his eyes and ears on full alert and Riggs took up the rear.

“Any idea where we’re going?” Loren whispered as Kee continued confidently.

“Nope.” She said softly, but somehow the statement didn’t bother him.

“Cargo bay, deflector control, navigation, stasis units…” Riggs read off the door labels.

“You read Reegrunion?” He asked.

“Little bit. Here, ‘Comm Core’.” He bent down to examine the door controls and, presumably, pick the lock. After only a moment he made a curious noise in his throat and tapped the key. The door opened obediently. “Not locked.”

Kee slipped inside first, followed by Loren who quickly located a console while she checked the room.

“How long will that take you?” Riggs asked when he had the door closed.

“Just a couple of minutes if you help me read some of this.” He said, eying the alien characters.

Riggs bent down to identify some of the items on the interface until Loren had enough of a handle on it to get started just about the time Kee returned from her slow circuit of the room.

“Can’t be much longer until they discover we’re missing.” Riggs told her.

She only made a murmur of agreement.

“What agreement was that guy going on about anyway?” Loren asked. The work was slow going on such an unfamiliar interface.

Kee snorted a short laugh, “Wouldn’t call it much of an agreement. He _suggested_ that if he could out drink me, I’d spend the night with him for free. Of course, I had taken an alcohol inhibitor, so he had no chance. Then I planted a tracker on him, drugged him and took his money to make it look like a robbery.” She said with a mixture of pride and amusement that she tried to cover with indifference, but he could see right through it. No matter how hard and dangerous it was, she loved this life.

Shouting and heavy footsteps out in the corridor told them that their time was up, they’d found that they were missing and with his insecure access into the computer, it wouldn’t take long to track them down.

“Please tell me you’re close.” Kee said.

“I’m into Gyges’ computer. Just another couple of minutes.” Now that the interface displayed Federation Standard, he could input the commands much more quickly. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Riggs looking closely at the place where the doors split in the middle.

“There’s enough of a lip here, I think we can brace it with something to buy ourselves those couple of minutes.”

“I’ll find something.” Kee said and began looking around. After only a few seconds, she returned with two pieces of conduit pipe and handed one over to Riggs.

Just as they began to hear the lock controls on the other side, they wedged the pieces of pipe between the center edges of the doors and the door frame and held them in place.

By then, Loren had tunneled into the transporter controls and was in the process of locating their biosigns. “Almost there.”

The door mechanism ground loudly as it tried to open, but Kee’s pipes held up.

“Locking on to us.” He said.

Something thin but heavy pierced through between the gap in the doors and whoever was outside used it as leverage to pry the doors apart.

“Energizing.”

Kee and Riggs stepped away from the door as the transporter took hold. The last thing they saw was the metal of the doors beginning to deform under the pressure.

The interior lights of the Gyges brightened a moment after the trio materialized. Loren immediately went for the conn.

“Set a course for these coordinates.” Riggs said, already standing at a side console.

A set of coordinates appeared on Loren’s panel and he plotted a course. “What’s there?”

“An alias that I’ve been setting up. Off the record, so it won’t have been burned like the others.”

“You want to go after the Cooperative.” Kee concluded.

“They’re looking for us to be delivered to them, and here we have the two of us with an unidentified third person. Add to that an ambitious newcomer that I invented to the criminal marketplace. I had planned to play the part myself, but I think Dales, here, will fit in the suit just fine.”

After he started them on their way, Loren turned. “What exactly do you want me to do?” He said uncertainly.


	6. Chapter 6

There were times when Russel wondered why she’d ever transferred out of Engineering to Command. This was one of them. When there was a challenge to overcome, a problem to solve, her inner engineer jumped at the chance. Even the tension in her neck and the heaviness in her eyelids couldn’t dampen the excitement.

She drained the gritty remains of her coffee cup and set it down next to Brisk’s on the table they’d been hunched over for hours. She’d have to call for a junior crewman to bring them some more. Pulling together a piece of software this complex this fast was no small feat, much less one that had to go undetected until it had done its work. It thrilled her as much as anything she did as captain.

“Run the simulation one more time.”

“Computer, run the simulation again, same parameters, include new changes to the base code.” Brisk said.

Russel watched the computer run through all of the possible scenarios, waiting for it to throw an error. Endeavor was due in the Lytasia system in just under four hours, from there the Coho would depart and continue to Lamda Cornae. This virus had to be ready long enough beforehand to run through the plan with the security team.

“I assume you had to have known about Norv’s position with SI?” Brisk said.

Russel opened her mouth to answer just as crewman Dunkel walked up with a fresh pot of coffee. “My hero!” She exclaimed as he filled both cups with a shy smile, set down the new pot next to them and walked away with the empty one.

She took a tentative sip of the hot, dark liquid that was almost potent enough to replace pure warp plasma before answering Brisk’s question. “I did.”

“How long?”

“Almost since she came on board, around eight years ago. I wasn’t happy about it, but they didn’t give me much choice. I had planned to lodge a protest afterward, but she ended up actually happy about the position, so I backed down.”

He shook his head. “I don’t think I could live a double life like that.”

“I’m sure it helps a lot that you and Andrew take care of Iliah so willingly.”

He laughed, “For a while there, we were worried that Richie would turn out as stubborn as Iliah when he became a toddler.”

Russel joined in the laughter, Iliah’s stubbornness was certainly on par with her mother’s and well known throughout the ship.

The computer suddenly began rapidly listing out error messages.

“We got farther than last time.” Brisk said wearily.

Russel took one more sip of coffee and set the cup down. Back to work.


	7. Chapter 7

Loren emerged from the rear of the shuttle and Kee had to bite her lip to keep her reaction off her face. He was dressed in an impeccably well-fitted suit that showed off his broad shoulders and trim build. The pinstriped pattern was perfectly angled for each cut of the fabric. He looked like a highly prosperous business man. All she wanted to do was peel every layer of that suit off of him right there.

When he looked up at her, she realized she’d failed to keep the lustful expression off of her face, and he smiled sheepishly at her. No use hiding it now, she placed her hands on his chest and slid them up along the lapel to his shoulders. Rising onto her toes, she planted a kiss on his lips, careful not to hurt her split lip, which they’d chosen not to heal to reinforce their ruse.

“There are some sleeping quarters in the back if you two want some privacy.” Jeff called back to them from the pilot seat.

Tempting, but they had no time, they were approaching the Lamda Cornae system where Jeff had been setting up this alias… this sexy, sexy alias. Kee shook herself out of it. She and Jeff had spent a considerable amount of time in this sector over the last few years. The Cooperative was here somewhere, they were sure of it.

“So, we fake our way in,” Loren said, “then what?”

“The governments that had originally started the Cooperative now claim to have no connection to them.” She said, “But they’re obviously well-funded. The money has to be coming from these governments. We need to find evidence that that’s what happening.”

“That seems so simple.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not all big, fiery explosions. More often than not, it’s just a boring paper trail.”

“For the record, I never promised you anything more than boring paper trails.” Jeff called back to her, which was true.

“And here I thought she was in it for the big, fiery explosions.” Loren teased.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down for another kiss.

* * *

Lamda Cornae had formerly been a major hub for the Orion Syndicate, but when the Dominion had invaded nearby Lytasia, the Syndicate had pulled out, leaving a power vacuum for almost ten years. Perfect conditions for a wounded Cooperative, officially rejected by their governments, to set up shop.

The only planet belonging to this star was uninhabitable. It happened to inhabit the location a fourth or fifth planet would normally occupy, but where inner planets might be expected to been found, there were only remains of what was once a planet or two and even they were gradually being pulled into the star.

Just inside the orbit of the lone planet there was a massive structure referred to as ‘the Ring’. It had been constructed out of rock from that former planet into a ring that spanned the full orbit of a planet, a diameter of one-point-four astronomical units. The inside of the Ring was a massive market place Kee and Jeff had been to many times.

After a quick stop at the apartment Jeff had set up in one of the residential districts, the trio made their way to the meeting place. Kee’s and Jeff’s hands were bound with rigged cuffs so they could release them easily when the time came.

Neither the cuffs nor the phaser Loren had trained on them were what drew the attention of onlookers in the thoroughfare. Monitors here and there in storefronts displayed a slideshow of SI operatives from the list. After a few minutes, sure enough, Kee’s picture appeared. Jeff’s would surely show up after a time. Under the exposure and attention, she felt more naked than even the most revealing disguises she’d put on in this line of work.

Most of those who watched them for more than a few seconds either sneered at them or looked like they wished they’d been the ones to bag the agents. When ‘Peter Mason,’ aka, Loren, had arranged the exchange, it sounded as though the reward was quite high, even.

They reached the specified clothing shop and walked straight to the back without anyone stopping them. They passed through a door marked “employees only” in Flaxian and were greeted by a Ferengi.

“My name is Plenk, you must be Mr. Mason. Come with me.” He turned and ushered them to a stairwell with hardly a glance at Kee and Jeff. He led them to a room with only a console and a desk but no guest chairs and a door to one side.

As soon as they entered the room, a pair of security thugs, a Finnean and an Orion, appeared through the door.

“We’ll have to verify their identities, of course.” Plenk said, taking a DNA scanner out of a drawer in the console.

“Of course, I understand.” Loren said.

Plenk circled around behind Kee and grabbed her wrist. She made a show of jerking it out of his hand and backing down when the Finnean made a move toward her.

Plenk took her wrist again more firmly and pressed her thumb to the scanner, then did the same to Jeff.

“You know, those Reegrunions you took them from work for my employers.” He said while he confirmed the results. “They’re not entirely happy about paying out the reward a second time.”

“You don’t say. Seems to me I had one of them first and they tried to steel her from me.”

Plenk nodded his accession, “Fair enough.” And held out his hand, “Your account information for the transfer?”

Loren handed him a padd with information on a Bolian bank account on it.

“I’ll take care of the transfer. My colleagues will take you from here.” He said pleasantly as though he was an ordinary merchant wrapping up a transaction.

The Finnean opened the door and stood by it while the Orion grabbed Kee’s arm to guide her forward. She yanked herself out of his grasp and walked through the door with the rest right behind.

The door opened up to a hallway, at the end of which was a door that led to room that was quite a bit larger than the one before. One entire wall was filled up with a hologram of a beautiful landscape with a blue sky almost like they were on a planet overlooking a live view. At the far end of the room sat a ring of five chairs. One for each of the five races of the Cooperative. The Flaxian Loren had communicated with earlier, Birix, sat in one of the chairs waiting for them.

Kee and Jeff came to a stop, standing side by side and she could feel the two guards sidle up behind them. Loren stood off to one side as though presenting them as a prize. He was doing an excellent job with his personae.

Birix stood from his chair and approached them wordlessly. The sharp smell from the oil Flaxians used to style their forehead whiskers reached her well before he did. He only stood there, observing her for a few long minutes. She tipped her head slightly up to meet his gaze.

Without warning he lashed out to punch her in the stomach. The force of it knocked the wind out of her, forcing her to double over and stagger back a step. She consciously inhaled to refill her lungs and straightened up as best she could through the pain. Out of the corner of her eye she was relieved to see that Loren had remained passive.

Birix sidestepped over to Jeff and swung a second punch that connected with his nose. He turned with the blow, but even then, she could tell it hit hard. When he straightened up, a truckle of blood was already visible at the edge of his nostril.

Birix took a few steps back from them. “If I had my way, I’d kill you right now.” His calm from before was already starting to crack, revealing raw rage below it. “But my colleagues wanted to be here to witness your execution.”

_That’s a mistake._ She thought.

“Your little stunt at Cordo II cost me 658 of my men besides my colleagues’ men and destroyed nearly a decade of work.”

“You expect us to be sympathetic?” Jeff said smoothly. “You were dismantling a Borg sphere in order to reverse-engineer weapons to use against the Federation.”

Kee caught a fraction of a response from Loren, but it didn’t look like anybody else saw it.

“We were conducting a legitimate salvage operation!” Birix shot back, then reigned himself in and turned to Loren. “The Cooperative thanks you for bringing these criminals to us.”

“Actually, I’ve been looking for a way to get on the Cooperative’s good side for a while now.” He said.

“And you have succeeded.” Birix placed a friendly hand on his shoulder and began guiding him toward the chairs, his earlier rage controlled for the moment. “Secure them in a holding cell until the others arrive.” He called back to the guards then turned back to Loren as they moved away. “Have you ever seen an antique Retellian bladed pistol?..”

With a jab in the back by the tip of a phaser, she and Jeff were taken through a side door. She didn’t like being split up, but there was nothing she could do just yet without putting Loren in danger.

Between here and the holding cell was their best bet to escape. She glanced sideways at Jeff without moving her head, but already knew he was thinking the same thing.

With two barely audible clicks, they freed themselves from the cuffs. Kee spun around with the restraints in her hand and smashed them into the side of the Orion’s face while Jeff moved on the Finnean.

The Orion swung his head with the blow, but turned back to her with no other reaction. She took an uncertain step back to give herself a moment to think just as he reached for her. His reach was farther than she expected and he lifted her off her feet by the front of her shirt as though she weighed nothing.

The sensation of flying through the air was cut short by the impact of the bulkhead hitting her back. Maybe it was the other way around.

She managed to land in a crouch and stayed that way, forcing him to reach down to her level. When he did, she grabbed his arm, curled it around her body and tucked into a roll, pulling him over with her. As she came up at his back, she hooked the restraints around his thick neck and pulled back. with this leverage, she swung his head around to smash against the bulkhead with an unnatural sound.

She turned to help Jeff only to find the Finnean crash down at her feet.

She snatched the phaser off his belt and tossed it to Jeff, then retrieved the Orion’s phaser for herself.

Together they dashed back to the conference room where Loren was still sitting with Birix. At the sight of the phasers pointed at him, he slapped a control pad on his wrist.

An alarm immediately began to blare and Birix grabbed Loren by the arm to encourage him to escape with him.

Kee aimed and pressed the firing key, but nothing happened.

She saw Jeff do the same. Nothing happened.

By the time it registered to her that there was some kind of dampening field preventing the weapons from discharging, Birix and Loren were already gone. She took a step to follow, but Jeff grabbed her arm to stop her.

“He’ll be okay for now. We need to keep moving.”

With difficulty, she tore herself away to follow him back into the corridor.


	8. Chapter 8

Streck checked through the team’s equipment they’d brought with them aboard the Coho. This was far from the first mission he’d led in Norv’s absence, but it wasn’t often they went into such lawless territory with no backup plan like this. He wanted to be absolutely certain his team was properly prepared.

When he was done, he repacked the crate, glaring somewhat at the case of tactical disorientation pods. The d-pods emit a visual and auditory pulse that overloads the senses and disorients anyone within proximity that doesn’t have specific protective gear. He had distinct and unpleasant memories from his Academy days when security-track cadets had to ‘try out’ these and a few other non-lethal devices.

“Forget your toothbrush?” Kaohi teased. He was currently in one corner of the aft compartment verifying the charge on the phaser power cells.

“That’s okay, I’ve been using yours.”

“I should tell you, Norv had me clean out the waste extraction unit with it a week ago.”

“Oh, that’s what those chunks were.”

“You two are disgusting!” Rosten finally looked up from a set of tricorders she was testing.

Th’rarek pretended to ignore them, but his antennae betrayed his amusement.

Russel only glanced up from her padd with a smirk.

 _“We’re approaching the target coordinates.”_ Erwin said from the cockpit.

Streck and Russel both left what they were doing and moved quickly to the forward compartment.

“Report.” She said.

“We’re picking up debris.” Brisk said. “Not large enough to be a ship, maybe a probe or a relay.”

“So much for sending the signal from the original source.” Erwin said.

“Beam some of the debris to the hold. I want to analyze it.”

“Locking on and energizing.” Erwin said.

“I’m checking for an ion trail. If there was a ship here within the last three days, we should at least pick up something.” Brisk added.

The computer worked while they waited to see if this would turn out to be a dead end. Finally, the sensor readout disappeared to be replaced by a representation of the area of space around them with a curved line arcing away from their location.

“It’s faint. They might have tried to dissipate it with a magneton pulse.” Streck said. “Or it could just be a random tachyon eddy.”

“But it’s all we’ve got.” Russel said. “Follow it.”

As Erwin obeyed her orders, Streck reached over Brisk’s shoulder to extrapolate where this trail might be leading. Sure enough, they were heading straight for Lamda Cornae. He wondered what might be there, other than a single, dead planet.

* * *

Streck watched the readout as they approached the system. Long-range sensors were picking up… something. As they got closer, they detected a massive artificial object, circular, seven-hundred-million kilometers in circumference, constructed around the star.

Traffic had increased here as well. Ships of mostly Valerian, Xepolite, Reegrunion and Kobliad designs, but also the occasional random, unaffiliated merc. Erwin managed to keep their distance from the main routes so as not to show up as even a blip on their sensors. This wasn’t Gyges, after all.

“I’m reading several docking regions, roughly every fifty kilometers around the entire thing.” He said.

“Any Kressari ships?” Russel asked.

“We’re too far out to tell, why?”

“That relay was Kressari. If they’re the ones that sent the transmission, and destroyed the relay to cover it up, we might just be looking for a Kressari ship.”

“Or one of the others in the Cooperative.”

“True.” She conceded. “And if that’s the case, it could be any of them.” She gestured to the ships on his display. “We need to get closer.”

At that Erwin spoke up, “I’m picking up a Pakled freighter. We can use them as a shield to block the other ships’ sensors and the Pakled sensors shouldn’t be sophisticated enough to detect us.” Soon the Pakled transport loomed in the forward and upper viewports as the shuttle slipped under it. “We’re in position, matching course and speed with the transport.”

“We need to know which of these ships destroyed that relay.” Russel said as they approached the ring.

“In order to broadcast a signal that far through subspace, the relay would have to have been powered by a mater-antimater reactor.” Brisk started.

“And the explosion would have left a subatomic signature on the hull of any ship nearby.” Russel finished, moving to one of the rear consoles. “I’m calling up our scans of the debris. Erwin, as soon as the pakleds dock, I want you to position ourselves right up against the underside of that ring. We’ll need to keep within a few meters of it in order to stay out of their sensor field. We’ll scan each and every ship around that ring if we have to.”

-*- -*- -*-

Jeff began reassembling the phaser he’d taken apart over the last half an hour or so. There didn’t seem to be any way to compensate for the dampening field that he suspected had gone up the moment Birix set off that alarm. At least someone had silenced the klaxon, but the lights in the ceiling continued to flash in alert mode.

“It’s useless. I can’t get it to work as long as that dampening field is up.”

He and Kee had found their way to a lower level and stole away in some kind of storage room.

“So, the question is, do we try to shut down the dampening field, or press forward without weapons? Or find some other weapons…” She trailed off, “Birix said something about an antique pistol. Maybe he has a collection here somewhere with blades or chemical projectiles.”

Footsteps approached their hiding place and he waited until they had passed before responding. “The question is, where might he keep such a collection?” And if they happened to come across somewhere they could shut down the dampening field or, even better, find the information they were looking for, so much the better.

-*- -*- -*-

The tremor from the shuttle locking into the emergency hatch reverberated through the ring and back to them. They’d found the hatch not far from a Xepolite ship with the exact subatomic signature they were looking for.

Streck wasn’t exactly sure what the captain’s end game was supposed to be. At this point, they were way off plan. If Norv were here, she’d tell him to relax and make it up as they went, which seemed to be exactly what Russel was doing. He couldn’t argue with the effectiveness they’d had over the years with that strategy, but it was certainly not what they taught at the Academy.

He’d decided to take Kaohi and Rosten and leave Th’rarek with Erwin in the shuttle and tasked them with finding Gyges if it was here somewhere. His two security officers plus Brisk and Russel waited below the dorsal hatch.

Rosten held up a tricorder above her. “No lifesigns in the corridor.”

“Open it.” Streck said.

She tapped the pad next to the shuttle’s hatch and it opened to reveal a mechanical hatch. While Kaohi boosted her up to reach it, she rotated the locking mechanism and pushed it inward with a grinding sound. A moment after her legs disappeared inside, her arm reached back down to help Kaohi in.

“We’re clear.” Rosten whispered back through the hatch and Streck moved to give Russel and Brisk a boost up.

Lastly Th’rarek gave him a lift up into the hatch, once he was through the inner hatch, he called back down. “Keep the engine running for us.” He had a feeling they were going to be needing a quick exit before long.

He closed the hatch and looked up and down the corridor to note the exact location. They were in what looked like a maintenance accessway. Pipes and conduits lined the space, connecting up through the low ceiling to whatever was above.

Russel pulled out her tricorder and began scanning above them. “This way.” She said, striking out in the lead. Streck jogged to catch up with her. He intended to keep his promise to Hawkins to bring her back safely despite her engineer’s enthusiasm.

-*- -*- -*-

This place was much bigger than it looked from the thoroughfare. It must have occupied the space below at least a dozen shops like the one they were in earlier. So far, they’d managed to avoid the patrols out searching for them. And without a functioning weapon between them, the further they could get without being seen, the better.

At this point, the plan was pretty fluid. They checked rooms along the way, searching for… well, anything that would bring about their next step. To that end, Kee bent down to override the lock on the next door. After only a moment, it opened and they slipped inside.

The room was pitch black, but once he’d taken a few steps inside, lights smoothly brightened until the room was fully illuminated to reveal stands dotted across the room with weapons of all kinds and all origins displayed on top. Knives, swords, bows and arrows, and some he couldn’t identify. Some were elaborate and decorative, others plain and functional.

Kee moved quickly through the room, searching for something she could use. She suddenly stopped and marched straight for something that had caught her eye. He moved closer to see her picking up an antique Earth pistol.

She turned it over in her hands, brushed her fingertips along the textured grip and began removing and reattaching pieces.

“From what we’ve seen so far, I doubt we’ll find a computer terminal on this level.” He said. “I think the level above us is going to be our best bet to download what we need. Assuming Birix took Loren to some kind of secure room, there’s probably some kind of command center there. Even if it’s only an auxiliary one, it would give us the access we need.”

She continued her inspection of the weapon as though he hadn’t spoken.

“Kee. Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Hm? What?” She said like she’d just woken up.

He shook his head. “Never mind.” She was probably thinking the same thing anyway. “Are you having fun?”

“Do you know what this is?” She held the pistol up to him.

“An old gun?”

“It’s a Sig Sauer P320 Compact. It was _the_ sidearm of the mid-twenty-first century Earth militaries.”

“Okay.”

She continued like he hadn’t spoken. “Fully ambidextrous, modular customization, standard picatinny rail, internal stainless-steel frame, of course, that’s before duranium, automated safeties…” She held it up the gaze down the sight. “I’ve only ever used a holographic P320.”

“Um, sounds good. I wonder if it still works.”

She glanced around the room to spot a small target range in the corner. On her way over to it, she snatched one of several clips off of the stand where she’d found the gun. Without a word, she slid the clip into the gun with a click and took up a stance facing the target.

While she lined up the shot, he prepared for the noise these older weapons were known for. She fired three shots in rapid succession straight into the bullseye, followed by what could only be described as a gleeful giggle.

She turned to him with a satisfied grin. “You going to pick something out?”

He looked around at the array of primitive weaponry. He’d had a basic course years ago at the Academy about ancient weaponry, but it was mostly history, virtually no hands-on training like she’d had. “Um…”

“I’ll find you something.” She said, beginning to search for something basic enough for him to use.


	9. Chapter 9

Birix paced the secure room he’d fled to with Loren in tow. “I should have killed those two when I had the chance, but my _colleagues_ wanted to be present for it.” He hissed through gritted teeth. “I tried to tell them that they’re dangerous and should be dealt with decisively and immediately, but I was _overruled_.”

“They do have a reputation.” Loren said leisurely, keeping up his personae as best he could. As long as Birix was venting like this, Loren wouldn’t have to worry about running out of things Riggs had had him memorize about this Peter Mason alias.

“They’re as slippery as a pair of Klabnian eels. How did you manage to keep them in custody?”

His mind raced for an explanation, “Trade secret.”

Birix barked a short laugh, “Indeed. You’re obviously more cunning than my Reegrunion friends.” He finally sat down across from Loren in the small seating area. “They say they’re directly responsible for the collapse of more than a dozen _extra-legal_ organizations.” He said in a confidential tone.

“Including yours?” He said, resting his hand idly on a marble tray of some sort that was on a table next to his chair. He needed some kind of weapon and when Kee didn’t shoot Birix on the way out of the meeting room, he assumed the alarm had disabled any energy weapons since she would not have hesitated.

“The Cooperative has _not_ collapsed!” He shouted suddenly. “We have simply gone underground to reorganize.”

“After those two agents turned your salvage operation into some kind of fireball, as I hear it.” He kept his eyes on his company rather than the console in the corner. Assuming this was some sort of panic room as it seemed, that console probably had access to everything they might need to both get the evidence they were looking for and get themselves out of here.

“What do you know about that?” His eyes narrowed dangerously.

“Pretty much just that. And that the governments that had been backing the Cooperative have left you out in the cold.”

“Not as much as you might think.”

“Really? It’s risky for them to continue to fund you, even under the table. How do you keep it from the Feds?”

He leaned back with a smirk, “Trade secret.”

Loren allowed a sober chuckle, “Fair enough.” He stood and bent backwards to make a show of stretching his back. “But I’m willing to bet it has something to do with that Ferengi I met earlier.”

“Plenk is very, shall I say, creative the way Ferengi tend to be.”

Loren bent over as though to sit back down, but instead, reached for the marble tray. He had to make his move fast or Birix might be able to alert the guards outside. He turned and smashed it into Birix’s face, knocking him to the floor and out cold with one blow.

He dropped the tray onto the chair and hurried over to the console.

-*- -*- -*-

Streck balanced at the top of the ladder that ran from the maintenance level to an access door around the corner from the airlock where the Xepolite ship was docked and scanned the corridor. A pair of lifesigns just inside the ship moved toward the airlock. As soon as the two Xepolites passed by and disappeared down the corridor, he shouldered the access door open and edged out with his phaser first.

He stepped cautiously out, peering down the corridor in both directions. When he was sure the way was clear, he waved the others out. Scanning as they went, he led them through the airlock into the ship.

The ship’s air was musty and heavy with moisture and a smell that could only be described as ‘green.’ The passage inside the airlock opened up to a large cargo bay. His attention was immediately drawn to a huge piece of equipment situated to one side. Based on its shape, it must have been designed to function in space. It didn’t have any base, but was held upright by scaffolding. Transmission plates easily twice his height extended in six axes.

That was a subspace relay alright. And, based on the discarded scaffolding on the other side of the bay, it was the second of two.

Russel and Brisk walked straight to it with their tricorders out. “I think we’ve found what we’re looking for.” She said.

“Will it work without being deployed in space?” Streck asked as Rosten and Kaohi spread out into the rest of the bay.

“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Brisk said absently, circling the relay slowly. When he found an access panel, he called to the captain, “Over here.”

He had the panel open by the time she joined him and she fished a network linkage dongle out of her pocket and attached it to the workings inside. Once they bypassed the security measures, it would be a simple matter to upload their virus and it would automatically do its work first to broadcast a signal that would scramble the burn list anywhere it could find, and second, to spread through the cooperative’s internal network to do the same.

With one eye on the tricorder’s proximity sensors and one continuously scanning the room, Streck sidestepped toward a console. He set the tricorder down where he could watch the readout and began exploring the interface. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, but knew he’d recognize it when he saw it. When he drilled down into the general alerts, he found it. A reference to Norv and someone named Riggs followed a short time later by an emergency signal at the same location. _Sounds about right, he thought_.

Before he could inform the others what he’d found, the proximity alarm sounded on his tricorder. When he checked, he saw that three Xepolites were approaching from deeper within the ship. “Everyone down.” He said just loud enough to be heard.

Each of them immediately dropped down behind the nearest cover and waited. Russel reached back up to swing the relay’s access door most of the way closed, but the dongle stopped it before it could latch.

Streck peeked between a pair of shipping containers to watch the three Xepolites saunter in and head towards the airlock. Half way there they slowed their pace and stopped, visually scanning the room. Streck breathed silently while he shifted the phaser in his hand.

One of them said something he couldn’t make out then stopped short when he saw the panel on the relay hanging open. He walked slowly towards it while the others spread out in search of the intruders.

Just before he was sure the Xepolite would be able to see the captain’s and Brisk’s positions, Streck leaned out and fired. In almost perfect unison, Kaohi and Rosten raised up and stunned the other two.

Russel and Brisk were back on their feet in an instant. “We’d better hurry.” Russel said.

Streck went back to the console and locked down both exits and pointed his two security officers to cover them. Their command center had to have registered phaser fire in the cargo bay, someone would be coming to investigate any moment. He looked around from his position, there must be a cargo transporter in here somewhere. Then he saw a transporter pad in the corner.

While waiting for Russel and Brisk to finish with the relay, he called up the transporter controls and programmed the coordinates where his CO seemed to be causing some trouble. The interior of the compartment appeared to be shielded, so he set the location for a clothing shop just outside of the shielded space, then programmed a delay just long enough for him to get from the console to the pad once he initiated the sequence.

Through the airlock’s window, they could see a number of crewmembers trying to get inside. Considering the Starfleet uniforms he and his team were wearing, it wasn’t hard to guess what they might be up to.

Sounds at the door on the other side of the room told them that others from the Xepolite crew were trying to force the doors open. Rosten and Kaohi stood their ground at each location.  
“Got it! Broadcasting!” Brisk called out.

“Get to the transporter pad.” He told them, then to Rosten and Kaohi, “You too.”

They hesitated for a split second, then obeyed. When they were well on their way, he keyed in the commands to begin the countdown just as the doors began to split in the middle. He rounded the console and sprinted toward the pad, arriving just as a flood of Xepolites rushed into the cargo bay. The last thing he saw before the transporter took hold was a mass of disrupters pointed at them.

-*- -*- -*-

This had turned into something significantly different than a surgical in and out deal. But, then, that could be said of a lot of their missions. Kee slipped through the corridors with her ‘borrowed’ projectile weapon in hand and Jeff at her shoulder. There was something about this gun… the surge of power, the recoil, the sound… it was unlike any energy weapon she’d ever used. Contrary to logic, it seemed somehow more powerful than an energy weapon. She squeezed the grip in her hand.

They’d managed to map out most of this place, but there was one area where they kept running into dead ends. There had to be a room there, but seemingly no way in. If her sense of direction was accurate, they’d zigzagged almost all the way around it with no entry point.

Jeff grabbed her shirt sleeve for her to stop and put his finger to his lips. Her eyes followed his as he pointed toward the T intersection ahead. He wasn’t as experienced with antique weapons as she was, so she’d taken point. She nodded and lifted the weapon that was noticeably heavier than a type-2 phaser.

Creeping up to the corner, she took each step careful not to make any noise. When she reached the edge, she let out a slow breath knowing as soon as she fired, the noise would cause all hell to break loose.

She swung around the corner. In an instant, she located two Farian guards, identified Starfleet TR-116 rifles in their hands, chose the higher priority target and aimed. The force behind the chemical projectile when she squeezed the trigger slammed the weapon hard into the palm of her hand, but she held steady for a second shot straight into his chest. By the time the second one had raised his rifle toward her, she was already firing two more shots that dropped him instantly.

But where they expected to find a door the guards had been protecting, they found only another dead end. “Can’t be.” She said as they rushed forward to inspect the wall. There had to be a hidden door here.  
“Better find it soon.” Jeff said at the sound of more guards coming toward the commotion she’d just made with the gun.

They ran their fingers all over the wall looking for a seam or anything that would indicate an opening. He searched high and she searched low. She slid her fingers along the edge where the floor met the wall and something gave way under her fingertip.

Just as it sounded like their pursuers were right at the corner, the entire wall slid up, revealing a room beyond. Jeff ducked in first to check the room and Kee backed in, keeping the gun trained on the approaching enemy.

Before she was fully into the room, the Orion she’d knocked out earlier swept yet another TR-116 around at her. She fired, just hitting him in the shoulder before the door dropped down between them.

She swung around to face whoever was in the room only to find that Jeff had lowered his weapon and was looking into another part of the room. She stepped farther inside and, to her relief, saw Loren sitting comfortably behind a console with Birix laying on the floor and a bloody Sazuth tray on the seat he’d apparently fallen from.

“Hey! How’re things?” Loren said with an exaggerated smile.

Kee couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up out of her. This whole time, she’d been worried about his safety. She took a deep breath to clear her mind while she tucked the gun into the back of her pants. “Find anything good?” She said, walking over to the console.

“I think so. I got into Plenk’s database, but almost all of it is encrypted.”

“Let me take a look.” Jeff said, looking over his shoulder and setting down the TR-116’s he’d grabbed on their way in.

She eyed the door. “How secure is that door?”

“Birix said a tricobalt warhead couldn’t get it open.” Loren said while Jeff tapped at the interface.

“But we opened it just with a hidden switch.” She argued.

“Because I unlocked it.” He grinned at her, holding up the remote Birix had had on his sleeve.

She shook her head in acceptance, just relieved not to have to worry about the guys outside just yet. “How long has he been out?” She asked, pointing to the unconscious Flaxian.

“Oh, about ten or fifteen minutes.”

While Loren turned back to work on the encryption with Jeff, Kee looked around for something to tie him up with, finding a decorative cable around a curtain intended to divide the room, presumably in case the place had to be occupied long enough to need privacy. She wrapped it around his wrists and tied them to his ankles behind his back, making sure to tie it nice and tight. Her stomach still hurt where he’d hit her earlier.

She stood and joined the two men at the console, not quite ready to tackle the question of how they were going to get out of this room. Her fingers found their way to the back of Loren’s hair and she ran them through then down his neck to trace along the collar of his jacket. She played innocent when he looked up at her, but she couldn’t stop the upward curl to her lips.


	10. Chapter 10

“You have no jurisdiction here!” The Flaxian clerk said defensively when Streck’s group had beamed into his shop. He tried to conceal the movement to reach under the desk for a panic button.

“Hands were I can see them.” Streck said, backing up the command with his phaser. The clerk was absolutely correct, they had no jurisdiction, but right now what he cared about was getting to the Starfleet officers that were somewhere here.

“Sir, over here.” Rosten called to him.

“Kaohi, watch him.” Streck said as he joined Rosten at what seemed to be the one and only door in the place other than the storefront.

“Think our people might be in there somewhere?” She asked.  
“Only one way to find out.”

-*- -*- -*-

It didn’t seem like they were getting anywhere with the encryption until suddenly it broke through and decoded all at once. Unfortunately, it decoded into Ferengi, which Loren didn’t read. But it seemed as though Riggs did.

The more he’d worked with him, the more Loren had to admit, he wasn’t such a bad guy, in fact, it seemed like they were a lot alike. Kee definitely seemed to have a type. If not for the fact that Riggs had been the one to convince her to break up with him, then sometime after that swooped in for himself, they might have been friends. She insisted it had been her choice on both counts, but something about it just stuck in his craw.

 _Grow up, let it go._ He told himself. Riggs was actually a nice guy and totally devoted to the cause.

“I think I have something.” Riggs said as he stopped scrolling through the Ferengi characters. “Hand me a data chip.”

He’d found a couple of them while waiting earlier and handed them over.

Kee was waiting near the door checking the number of projectiles remaining in some kind of old pistol she’d evidently taken from Birix’s collection.

“She’s gonna want to keep that.” Riggs said.

“What is it?”

“I don’t remember what she called it, but I think she’s in love.”

“From what Birix told me, I think most of the items in his collection were not acquired through exactly legal means. She’s probably going to have to give it up.”

“You can tell her that.” He said with a chuckle.

He watched her for a moment, “Maybe when she’s not armed.” He said with a laugh and Riggs joined in more loudly.

“Hey!” Kee called from across the room. “Whatever this is,” She pointed to them both, “I don’t like it.”

“What?” Loren said, “Us getting along?”

“Between the two of you, you know _way_ too much about me for my comfort.” She said crossly.

There was nothing more he could do at the console, so he walked over to her. “You don’t like your worlds colliding.”

“No.” She said overly glumly.

He slipped his hands around her waist, “After this is over, we’ll get it all separated again so you can be happy.”

“Don’t you try to sweet talk me.” She said, removing his hands with a sly smile, then bent to pick up the weapons Riggs had brought in. By the time she held one out to him, all playfulness was gone. “You probably haven’t used one of these.”

He took one from her, “Never even seen one. It looks Federation.”

“It is. Yet another thing we’re going to have to follow up on when this is over.” She said. “It’s not much different than a type-3 phaser, only it fires a projectile instead of a phaser blast. You shouldn’t have any problem with it.”

“Got it.”

She leaned back and tossed the other one to Riggs, who was walking over with two of the data chips in his hand. “I made two copies, just in case.” He said and handed one to Kee.

“How many of them are out there?” She asked him.

“According to the readout, nine in the immediate vicinity and another eight elsewhere in the compound.”

Kee only nodded curtly and began looking around for cover. She found a thick wooden table with padds and other equipment strewn across the surface. With a small, strained sound, she upended it, sending the items scattering across the floor.

“Give me a hand?” Riggs said, positioning himself behind a large desk.

Loren joined him and together they slid it into a position where they could take cover behind it and still see the door. “Is there a plan for what to do next? Or are we just going to shoot our way through and see what happens next?”

“Now you’re getting the hang of this.” Riggs said.

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

“Still got that remote?”

“Yeah.” He held it up in the palm of his hand.

“You ready, Kee?” He called.

“Always.” She called back from behind the table.

At that, Riggs nodded to him and he swallowed hard before pressing the button to open the door.

Before it had even retracted half way into the ceiling, projectiles from outside sliced through the air. Splintered pits seemed to appear out of nowhere in the surface of Kee’s table as they embedded themselves in it. He imagined she saw a similar sight on the desk he knelt behind.

When there was the smallest pause, Riggs leaned around the side to fire back and Loren followed suit over the top of the desk. From his position, he couldn’t see Kee, but he certainly heard her weapon discharge at an even and measured pace.

He heard a few bodies hit the ground, but couldn’t tell just who had landed the hits. Another flurry of return fire forced them to dive back down behind their cover.

“Four down.” Riggs said calmly.

The smell of the accelerant from the TR-116’s was getting thick and began to burn his nose. A change in the firing pattern drew his attention to the sound of movement at the door.

“They’re moving in.” Riggs told him just before he leaned back out with his weapon.

Two more attackers down. Then three. Over the top of the desk, he watched Kee stand up, locate one target then the other, dropping them each with one shot.

In the eerie silence that followed, his pounding heart seemed to be the only sound. Then Kee’s careful, deliberate footsteps as she moved toward the corridor, listening for anyone still out there.

Loren and Riggs joined her a moment later and together they moved out. Even if they could contact Gyges, they couldn’t beam through the dampening field. By the looks of the people they’d seen outside the shop, he doubted they’d get far out there either. He could only trust they were moving toward a viable plan.

They’d made it around several corners when a stream of projectiles peppered the wall next to him.

“Get back!” Kee shouted, but he was already in motion.

They moved away from the source of the weapons fire, but there were more of them coming from the other direction. They were trapped in a stretch of corridor with no cover, all they could do was press up against the wall to make themselves as small as possible.

Riggs fired back in the direction they’d come from, Kee fired up ahead and Loren joined her.

Her weapon stopped firing and clicked a few times. She ejected the clip and slid a second on in place before the empty one had clattered noisily to the floor. Her back was pressed tight against his chest so that he had to reach around her shoulder to use his weapon.

Despite the constant discharge, the enemy pushed toward them. He heard the thud of a body hit the floor behind him. He turned toward the sound to see attackers there picking up the body of their fallen associate to use as a shield.

Loren swung around to join Riggs in firing toward them, but it was useless to stop their advance. When they were close enough, they hurled the body toward them, knocking all three of them down like a row of dominos.

The pair in the other direction took the opportunity to rush toward them as well. Loren rolled away to get back to his feet, but he wasn’t fast enough. One of them pulled him up by his lapel with one hand and slammed him against the wall with his rifle jammed up under his chin.

As he struggled in vein against this much larger guy, he saw Kee, already in full fight mode, heaving one just as large over her back. How in the world she did that, he would never understand.

Just as she was done, another was on top of her. He hooked his foot around the back of her knee and slammed the heel of his hand into her chest, sending her careening back, sliding away. Then he lifted his weapon and took aim.

Riggs threw off the one he’d been grappling with and surged forward to tackle the one aiming at Kee.

Just as he got there, the weapon discharged directly into his midsection.

“No!” Kee screamed, already on her feet, rushing toward her partner.

Before she got far, the one Riggs had taken down lunged for her, reaching out to grab her ankle.

She hit the floor hard and her gun slid ahead, stopping just out of reach. She kicked with her free leg against the face of the one holding her ankle, but he kept his grip. She strained to reach the gun, but it was no use.

Just then, Birix walked calmly up to her from behind his guards and placed his boot on top of her wrist.

She cried out through gritted teeth as he pressed down with his weight.

He slowly bent down to pick the gun up and regarded it fondly. “Good choice. It’s one of my favorites.” Then he pointed it down straight at her. “It’ll be the last thing you see.”

Her eyes peered up at him past the barrel of the gun. Despite the steel look on her face, he knew her mind was racing for a way out.

Birix hesitated, “Let me think, which one should I do first? This one,” he indicated Riggs, “is already half way there, so where’s the fun in that? Maybe that one?” He gestured to Loren while keeping the gun trained on Kee. “Or you?”

Her free hand clenched into a fist but she didn’t dare make a move.

“While I would enjoy making you watch while I kill your companions, keeping you alive any moment longer than necessary is just not the wisest choice. You’ll go first.” He said, edging the gun closer, but still outside of her reach, even if she was fast enough.

As Loren watched, time seemed to freeze. Kee had told him about having to watch helplessly as the love of her life was shot in front of her. He’d sat with her at times when she would still become overwhelmed with the grief of losing him. But he was only now beginning to grasp the depth and power of that grief. Yet he couldn’t bear to look away as he waited, expecting the trigger to be pulled any second.

“Hold it right there!”

All heads turned towards the authoritative voice. Even Kee’s jaw dropped in disbelief.

Russel and Streck stood just down the corridor with a pair of TR-116’s leveled at their captives.

Birix made a derisive sound in his throat with a smile that disappeared when Rosten and Brisk appeared at the other end of the corridor, surrounding them.

Finally, he lifted the gun away from Kee in only partial surrender. The guard pinning Loren to the wall didn’t budge.

“Okay, you got us.” Birix said. “Now what do you expect to happen? You have no jurisdiction here, you can’t arrest us. This place is shielded from transporters, you can’t beam away. The majority of the Ring’s inhabitants belong to the Cooperative, so the moment you step out that door,” he pointed in the general direction of the exit, “you’ll be dead. You have no way out.”

“Step back.” Russel ordered.

Birix took a slow step back.

With her wrist finally free, Kee stood immediately.

“Good.” Russel said pleasantly. “Now, hand over the weapon.”

He thrust the gun into the palm of Kee’s hand. She moved toward him, forcing him to take a step back toward the wall. Without her eyes leaving his, she stretched her arm out to press the tip of the gun against the head of the one holding Loren against the wall.

The meaning was clear, the guard stepped back and handed Loren the TR-116 with a glare.

“Commander.” Streck called. When she turned, he tossed something to her.

His heart jumped into his throat when she turned it over in her hand and he could see what it was: a D-pod. The rescue team might have protection from its effects, but the rest of them didn’t. This would not be pleasant.

That didn’t seem to bother Kee, though, she held it up for Birix with a wicked smirk. “This is going to hurt.” At that, she pressed the activation key.

The device started up with a squeal that quickly elevated to a shriek, then moved beyond the range of Human hearing. Even once there was no discernible sound, pain pierced through his ears. His cry of pain joined the others in the corridor as everyone not protected dropped to their knees covering their ears.

The device wasn’t finished, though, and gave off a brilliant, prolonged burst of light that was blinding even through tightly closed eyelids.

He wasn’t sure if it had stopped or he had become momentarily def and blind. In a world of silent darkness, someone grabbed him firmly by the arm and pulled him to his feet, or at least as far to his feet as he could manage in this state. He allowed himself to be ushered along, trusting that it was the rescue team guiding them.

After a minute, his vision began to return, but the overhead lights were too bright to look anywhere but the floor. He could make out several sets of Starfleet uniform legs and found that Kee was by his side, struggling under the weight of her partner. For one disturbing moment, it looked like something tarry black was dripping from Riggs body, but then he blinked and realized that it was blood, he was seeing in black and white.

His hearing was beginning to return, too. He could make out some voices, but not what they were saying, how far away they were or even what direction it was coming from.

The group stopped when they reached a staircase he vaguely recognized from hours ago. Barely able to stand on his own now, he followed the others up the stairs. He caught a glimpse of the two gold-shirts at the top of the staircase with their weapons raised, rushing through the door shouting something he couldn’t decipher.

Then he was hurried through to see the shopkeeper on his knees with his hands raised and Kaohi slowly rising to his feet with a black eye as though they’d interrupted an altercation.  
“Coho! Tell me you’ve got a transporter lock.” Streck’s voice was the first thing he managed to hear clearly.

 _“We’ve got you. And we have Gyges standing by on remote.”_ Erwin’s voice came through the comm a little too loud.

“Beam the captain, Brisk, myself and Rosten to the Coho, everybody else to Gyges.”

Color began to return to his vision and he reached over to help Kee support Riggs as the transporter took hold of them.

* * *

The moment their bodies solidified, Kee carefully laid Jeff down on the floor while Loren and Kaohi rushed forward to take the conn and tactical. She stepped away to grab a med kit from the wall and knelt next to him.

“Can you fly in your condition?” She asked Loren, her own hearing and vision only just returning.

“I’ll manage.” Inertia shifted as Loren punched the ship to its highest sublight speed. She balanced on her knees as best she could while leaning over Jeff to pass the tricorder over his wound.

“Brace yourself, sir.” Kaohi called. “There are a lot of ships undocking and coming after us.”

She prepared without responding. The report from the tricorder wasn’t good. The projectile was too deep to remove in the field, she needed to get him to a sickbay right away. To punctuate the unlikelihood of that, the ship rocked with weapons fire.

She leaned over his face, “Hey, you still here?”

His eyes moved just enough to know he could hear her.

“I’ll try to stabilize you, but there’s not a lot I can do until we get you to sickbay.”

His only response was a weak sigh, so she set about following the procedures to slow internal bleeding in the presence of a foreign object, hoping the Cooperative hadn’t done any nasty sort of modifications to the TR-116 projectiles.

When she had a moment, she glanced up to see the shuttle Coho in the starboard viewport with enemy weapons lighting up their shields. It suddenly disappeared and her stomach lurched and she realized Loren had gone into some kind of evasive maneuver. She had to work not to grab onto something, reminding herself that between the grav-plating and the inertial dampers, there was no way she’d go tumbling around the cockpit no matter if it felt like they were upside-down and sideways. Unless, of course, the inertial dampers went offline.

By the time she’d slowed the bleeding, her hands were covered in blood, a brighter red than hers. A dose of almost-universal blood plasma was included in the kit, so she injected that into an artery and scanned again to be sure she hadn’t missed anything. Finally, she found a sterile towelette to wipe the blood away from the wound and applied a temporary bandage.

She leaned close to his ear. “Now, don’t go anywhere.” Then she stood to check the status report. They were taking heavy fire, their shields were nearly gone, multiple systems failing. She couldn’t fault Loren and Kaohi, they were doing everything she would have done and more. They were just outnumbered and outgunned. Two little shuttles against what was quickly becoming an armada. Even Gyges couldn’t slip away under those conditions.

Her sensor display showed a proximity alert, another warp signature. “Up ahead-”

“I see it.” Loren said. But with enemy ships on both their port and starboard sides as well as above, below and aft, there was nothing more to do.

She waited with shallow breaths for the ship ahead to come close enough to be identified, which didn’t take long with how hard Loren and whoever was piloting the Coco were pushing the engines. When the sensor identification rolled out on the screen she recognized it immediately. “It’s Endeavor.”

“She’s slowing and coming about with the shuttle bay doors open.” Kaohi said.

The dorsal view of Endeavor enlarged so fast through the forward viewport that she had to look away with a feeling like her stomach had surged into her chest. She was vaguely aware of a blink of light as they passed through the forcefield, then a rapid deceleration that the inertial dampers couldn’t mask.

When they came to a stop on the solid deck of Endeavor’s shuttle bay, she took a couple of deep breaths before punching the comm button. “Emergency transport! Beam Commander Riggs to sickbay.”

With Jeff’s body already disappearing, she rushed out of Gyges toward the nearest turbolift, greeted by the smell of scorched duranium and altonian-luvetric alloy. She just caught sight of Russel as she sprinted ahead to the same destination. By the time Kee got there, the captain had already been whisked away and she waited a moment on the balls of her feet before the next turbolift arrived.

“Bridge!” She said more forcefully than she’d intended. Her heart was still pounding. The short trip to the bridge was agonizing in the confined space. She found herself pacing and hadn’t quite managed to calm her nerves by the time the doors opened onto the bridge.

“-bearing 046-mark-005, maximum warp.” Russel had just reached her favored spot at the center of the bridge behind the conn.

“Cooperative ships are pursuing, but they won’t be able to match our speed.” Kimura said from tactical.

With a collective breath of relief every face on the bridge slowly turned toward Kee. Her eyes panned across the bridge to each one in turn. She suddenly felt exposed with her anonymity stripped bare. She hadn’t considered what she would say to them, hadn’t been able to spare it even a single thought. Besides the fact that she must have looked awful. Now they waited for her.

“I’m sure you all have questions.” She said tentatively. “And you deserve answers. But for now, all I can say is, yes, I’m an agent of Starfleet Intelligence, I have been for longer than I’ve known most of you. And… thank you.” With that, she turned and stalked back into the turbolift. “Sickbay.”

Questions that she’d put off even pondering came flooding into her mind. How would she continue to function as an agent now? Could she, even? Or would they have to concede all of their operations over to that other _section_ of SI that hadn’t been burned? The one that officially didn’t exist. And what of her family? Who else was out there that might still have that list?

She pushed all of the uncertainty aside when the doors opened and she walked the short distance to sickbay. When she entered, she saw the entire medical staff clustered in the surgical suite, moving and talking with medical efficiency. All she could see of Jeff were his boots.

It dawned on her that she still had the antique pistol tucked in the back of her belt, so she wearily pulled it out, ejected the clip and laid them both on the foot of the empty biobed nearby.

All she could do was stand there and wait to see if they’d gotten him there in time. Usually, she was the one to be shot or stabbed or in some way mortally injured. She’d much rather be in that position than this one, helpless to do anything but watch. Her wrist hurt, her lip hurt, her back hurt… just about everything hurt, but nothing compared to waiting to see if he would make it.

They’d been together for so long, been through so much. At times had been each other’s sole source of emotional support. They’d been everything to each other. She loved him beyond any ability to define or articulate. Only that he was her _partner_.

She hadn’t realized that tears had filled her eyes until the door behind her opened and she blinked them away before turning around. She smiled and dropped to her knees when she saw that Loren had brought Iliah to her.

The little girl flung herself into her arms and wrapped her arms tight around her neck. Tears threatened again at the reunion that wouldn’t have been if her crewmates hadn’t been there for them. Kee pulled away just a little and turned to see the activity surrounding her partner.

“Is that the guy you had to help?” Iliah asked innocently, oblivious to all that ‘help’ really involved.

“Yes, he’s my partner.”

“What do you do together?”

Kee couldn’t help a wistful smile as she reached out to include Loren in the embrace. So much. She thought.


	11. Chapter 11

“… so we walked past this guy selling cheese-cookie sandwiches, which your mom loves. But she got suspicious when he only had oatmeal-swiss. Everybody knows the only proper cheese-cookie sandwich is chocolate chip and cheddar.” Riggs somehow maintained an absolutely straight face.

“Anyway, he could tell she was suspicious and reached for a pickle gun behind the counter. So, your mom tore the lid off of her super foamy venti macchiato and threw it right in his face. She pulled him across the counter and arrested him. Then she said to me, ‘that’s what they call deus ex macchiato.’”

Loren watched while his daughter took in the story with rapt attention across the mess hall table. When Riggs was done, she watched him with that penetrating gaze she inherited from her mother. The wheels turned in her mind, trying to decide whether or not the story was true.

Finally, her eyes narrowed and a smile crept onto her lips. “No. You made that up.”

Riggs chuckled, pleased with himself.

“You’d better get going, your holodeck time started five minutes ago.” Loren told her.

“Oh yeah!” She jumped to her feet. “I’m going to play Flotter and Naertho the Custodian of Realms!”

“Watch out on that one, the solution’s not what you think at first.” Riggs told her.

“I will.” With that, she bounded out of the room.

Loren smiled, watching her go.

“I’m glad to see the Flotter series is still popular.” Riggs said. “Though, when I was that age, it was before holo-technology, so it was only a 3D interactive.”

“Same here. The holo-version came out just as I was too old for it. The flight simulator was excellent, though.”

“We didn’t have that.”

They fell into a silence that stretched into awkwardness. Loren found himself playing with the textured grip on the handle of his coffee mug.

“I wanted to apologize to you for a long time,” Riggs said, finally breaking the silence, “for advising Kee to break up with you eight years ago. And for giving her a hard time when you got back together.”

He struggled to take in what the other man had said. It was the last thing he’d expected. “I, uh, appreciate that.”

“I’m not sure how she manages it.” Riggs continued. “Most agents avoid any kind of attachments, and when it does happen, either the relationship or their career suffers. But Kee seems to be able to keep all of these pieces of her life compartmentalized.”

Loren nodded, he knew exactly what he meant. “Probably has something to do with her background.”

“Probably.” He agreed. “One thing I’m absolutely certain of is if I ever made her choose between you and SI, you would win, hands down.”

Riggs had no idea what it meant to hear that, but he brushed it off, “No, what she would do is deck you for trying to make her choose.”

Riggs laughed freely at that. “You’re probably right, but forgive me if I don’t put your theory to the test.”

By the time Kee walked in with Maggie, both men were laughing heartily. Maggie turned toward the coffee station while Kee approached with a cautiously cross expression.

“What did I say about this?”

“You said you don’t want us to associate with each other because you’re uncomfortable with how much we know about you.” Loren said lightheartedly mocking her earlier concern. “But we disagree.” He said, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed.

Her eyes narrowed and she sized him up with the smallest hint of a playful upturn to her lips. A near duplicate of Iliah’s face a few moments ago. When he didn’t back down, she slowly sat across from him.

“What did SI Command say?” Riggs asked, ignoring the flirtatious showdown.

Finally dropping the matter, she sighed heavily. “They’re putting us on hold.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Until they can get this mess cleaned up. There are still agents in the field, exposed.”

“All the more reason you and I should be back out there.”

“I agree! But we’ve been specifically ordered to stand down.” She held up a finger to stop whatever he was going to say. “And they worded it in enough different ways that there are no loopholes.”

“So, they expect us to do nothing?”

“Russel and Brisk’s virus helped, but Command believes that it’s too risky to send burned agents back out into the field until they’ve gotten it cleaned up.”

“What do they plan to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ve received messages from all of my family members, about half of our class at the Academy,” she ticked them off on her fingers, “every member of my Resistance cell, even people I grew up with! Now that it’s out there, I don’t know what they can do. But there’s the other section of SI that wasn’t burned. They’re handling it somehow.” Whatever that meant Riggs seemed to understand. “Also, evidently, the captain has requested to have you remain here on temporary assignment for now.”

“Doing what?” He almost laughed.

“I have no idea. But I know one thing,” she leaned forward, “if you’re going to be here for a while, I’m going to have to do something about this.” She pointed to the two of them, jumping back to the beginning of the conversation. “I’ll put one of you in a holding cell to keep you apart if I have to.”

Loren thought fast, faster than Riggs apparently. “I have a job, he doesn’t.” He said, pointing at him.

Maggie approached carefully with two cups of coffee in her hands. Kee jumped up to take one from her, holding it carefully in her left hand and pressing her right palm against the hot side.

Despite her protests to the contrary, the kickback force from repeatedly firing that antique gun had bruised her hand pretty badly. Though, when they were standing in the gym earlier and he’d suggested she have the doctor take look at it, she proceeded to take down one of her lieutenants that she’d been sparring with just to prove she was okay.

Riggs glanced down at her hand positioning with a knowing look, maybe he’d have better luck convincing her to go to sickbay.

 _“All hands, report to your posts.”_ Hawkins’ voice broke through the comm just as she put the drink to her lips. _“We have company.”_


End file.
